Skells

by F. P. Lione

  “Everything alright?” Fiore asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m not sure this is for me; I don’t remember the collar. Can you pick up my radio? I’m gonna run upstairs and see if one of the detectives knows anything about this.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ll be out in the car.”

  I went upstairs to the second floor to see if Jack Sullivan or Eileen Toomey from the detective squad were in. Both of their names were on the suit, but neither was there. They were scheduled to do a day tour in the morning.

  I was still shaking my head when I went out to the RMP.

  “What was it?” Fiore asked as I got in the car.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  “Did you talk to the detectives?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll see them in the morning, then I’ll call the Advocate’s Office,” I said.

  “You can’t get sued, the city indemnifies you,” Romano said from the backseat. I didn’t realize he was in the car.

  “They only indemnify you if you can prove to them you didn’t do anything wrong, otherwise you’re screwed,” I said, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

  “The fire department doesn’t get sued,” Romano said confidently.

  I looked back at him. “Don’t kid yourself, Nick. The fire department gets sued.”

  “But the city indemnifies them,” he said.

  “You’re still dealing with the city of New York. If you get sued for ten million dollars for something during a fire, they’ll cover you. But only for the first three million—after that you’re on your own.”

  “I got sued like that once, back in 1998,” Fiore said.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I was still working out in Queens. I locked this guy up for a robbery, and he was wanted for murder. He wound up doing twenty-five to life for the murder. He filed a lawsuit against me because he said I didn’t return his Social Security card. He said that I was trying to steal his identity.” Fiore started laughing.

  “You gotta laugh,” I said. “I never take the originals. I always make photostat copies of their IDs.” I’m real careful about that. I copy anything pertinent, like welfare cards, credit cards, licenses. At one point Jersey didn’t have photo IDs, so I copied everything. A lot of perps have several IDs, so I copy them all in case I get a hit on one of the other names they carry. I even copy weird stuff that has nothing to do with anything, like business cards and phone numbers.

  “You worried about it, Tony?” Fiore asked.

  “No, but how many times do you see this crap where a perp gets a million dollars for stuff like this? It’s ridiculous,” I said, disgusted.

  “Remember Isaiah 54:17, Tony—no weapon formed against you shall prosper—”

  “Oh here we go,” Romano said sarcastically from the back-seat.

  I looked back at him, surprised that he said that. “You better watch your mouth, Nick, before I call in a complaint against you and hold up your move to FD,” I said toward the back-seat.

  “You would do that?” he asked, unconvinced. “Absolutely,” I said.

  “You scum,” he spat. He waited a beat and said, “So what does that mean?”

  “It means that if you don’t watch your mouth—” I started to say, facing him while I backed the car out.

  “Nooo, the thing that Joe was saying about a weapon,” he said.

  “What do you care? You act like he’s bothering you,” I said to Nick.

  He shook his head and sighed. “Just tell me what it means in case I ever get sued.”

  Joe smiled. “It says in the NIV translation, ‘“No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD.’”

  “Like I said, what does that mean?” Romano asked again.

  “It means, Nick, that it is our heritage as Christians for God to protect us from any weapons of force or violence, and also protect us in the courts. People suing people is nothing new—they’ve been doing it for thousands of years. People think that because they say their lawsuit is in the name of truth and justice, they can falsely accuse someone and make some money. Like the lawsuit against Tony—whoever it was got locked up for doing something wrong, but he’s pointing the finger at everyone else instead of taking responsibility for his actions. He should own up to whatever he did and take the hit for it.”

  “Maybe in Fioreland,” Nick said. I stopped the car on the corner of 9th Avenue, and Joe and I turned to look at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You gonna get us coffee?” I asked.

  “Why do I always have to get the coffee? Why don’t one of you go in and let Geri sexually harass you?”

  “Because we have more time on than you,” I said, smiling. “This is ridiculous,” he snapped, getting out of the car and going into the deli.

  “Get the paper,” I yelled after him.

  “He needs an attitude adjustment,” I said. “What’s his problem?”

  “I think Geri scares him,” Fiore said about the clerk in the deli. She works nights like we do and is always propositioning us. She’s cute, about five feet tall, with short brown hair and big blue eyes. She does stupid stuff like drops our change and says “Oops” so we have to bend over and pick it up. It’s pretty funny. It bothers Romano more than Joe and me, so we make him go in and get us coffee just to bust his chops.

  “He’s leaving soon—with all his show about wanting to go to FD, he’s probably scared.”

  “You shoulda been a shrink, Joe,” I said, shaking my head. But thinking about it, he was probably right.

  “He’s drinking a lot. He’s been going to the bar in the morning,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Fiore said. “It’ll probably be better for him once he’s FD. I just hope he doesn’t get a house where there’s a lot of drinking.”

  Romano came out of the deli with the Daily News, three coffees, and a couple of what looked like blueberry muffins.

  He handed us the coffee and muffins through my window. I handed Fiore the coffee and a muffin and ate mine as I drove us up to 42nd and 8th. I got out of the car to smoke a cigarette with Romano. I had quit for a week in March but started again after Fiore and I grabbed a gun collar one night.

  “So, Nick, you been hanging out with Rooney in the mornings?” I asked.

  “No, Rooney only talks to me if there’s no one else in the bar,” he said. “I hang out there alone.”

  “So why do you go there?” I asked.

  “The same reason you went there, Tony—to have a drink. I don’t need Rooney to talk to me to do that.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said, leaving it at that. When I was drinking and someone tried to talk to me about it, I usually avoided them. If I was gonna say something to him, it wouldn’t be in front of Fiore.

  I finished my coffee and cigarette and got back in the car.

  “Can you pick me up for my meal about a quarter to five?” he asked, leaning in Joe’s window.

  “Sure, Nick,” Joe told him. “No problem.”

  “South David,” Central called.

  “South David,” Fiore responded.

  “I’ve got a call coming in for an explosion.” Central gave a 9th Avenue address between 37th and 38th streets. “Apartment 3 Boy; FD has been notified.”

  “10-4,” Fiore said.

  Fiore and I gave each other a “What’s this?” look.

  “See you later, Nick,” I said before pulling away.

  I made a left on 43rd Street and took 9th Avenue straight down, wondering what the explosion could be. I narrowed it down to drugs, fireworks, or a bomb. I heard Central giving the job to South Sergeant, and Hanrahan answered, saying he would respond with a delay. He was probably still at the precinct.

  There’s not many residential apartments in our sector, mostly first-floor storefronts with apartments on the second and third floors
of the building. We pulled up in front, and as far as I knew, I’d never answered any jobs here. The address was between a butcher and a pizzeria, both closed. It wasn’t a real neighborhood where you’d get a crowd of concerned residents helping us out with information. In fact, there was no one outside.

  We pushed on the brown door that screeched and scraped against the floor. It opened into a small foyer with a row of mailboxes. I scanned for 3B and saw the name Healy. The building had a damp, musty smell.

  The stairs were straight ahead, the same dull brown as the door, steep and narrow with warped floorboards. They creaked and groaned as Fiore and I started walking up. There was a single yellow light sticking out of the wall with some of its wires showing; otherwise the stairway was dim. The old plasterboard wall next to the stairs was bowed in places. The place had condemned written all over it.

  “I don’t smell anything,” Fiore said. “If they were cooking up chemicals to make drugs and blew themselves up, it would have that bitter almond smell.”

  “Everybody always says that, ‘bitter almonds.’ What do bitter almonds smell like? Did you ever smell bitter almonds?” I asked.

  He chuckled. “I don’t even know what almonds smell like. I know when people blow themselves up making drugs, it never smells like it does around street vendors who roast the nuts.”

  “Exactly my point,” I said.

  We reached the first landing. It was long, with a shorter landing going up to the third floor. As we turned to start up the stairs to the third floor, the smell hit us.

  “What is that?” Fiore said. The smell was a mix of burnt flesh, hair, and something else familiar that I couldn’t place.

  “Definitely not bitter almonds,” I said. Definitely charred flesh. We started jogging now. I grabbed the banister for support in case the stairs gave out, and I heard a loud crack. I let go and jogged a little faster.

  At the top of the third-floor landing, 3B was the second door on the left. There was an old man in the hallway. He wore threadbare blue cotton pajamas, a green ragged terry-cloth robe with a yellow stain on the chest, and brown leather slippers. He had longish white hair, a couple of days’ worth of white stubble on his face, and he wore thick, Coke bottle glasses.

  “Officer, I heard an explosion. Danny, my neighbor, is screaming in there,” he said, pointing to the door. He was missing a yellow tooth in the front that matched the stain on his bathrobe.

  “Was it a gunshot?” Fiore asked.

  “No.” He shook his head.

  “Are you sure?” Fiore asked again.

  “Am I sure? I’ve lived in this city for seventy-four years. You think I don’t know a gunshot when I hear one?” He shook his head like we were idiots. “Gunshots don’t explode, and they don’t smell like that,” he insisted as he aimed his thumb toward the door.

  I was already knocking on the door while Fiore tried to get answers from the old man. I could hear yelling from inside, but it was faint.

  “Police!” I said, knocking and trying the doorknob.

  “I called Eva, his wife,” the guy was saying. “She works over at Bellevue. She’s a nurse’s aide; she’s coming home now.”

  “Do you have a key?” I asked, turning my head toward him.

  “If I had a key, would I be out here talking to you or would I be in there helping my friend?” he said, aggravated. I love when people talk to me like this.

  “If he was your friend, you’d have a key,” I said.

  I took a step back and gave a hard kick to the door under the handle. I heard the crunch of the wood splintering, but it didn’t open. I jarred my leg, pain running through my hip. I took a step back, figuring it would take another good shot to open it.

  “You okay?” Joe asked. It actually hurt to step on my leg.

  I nodded. “Yeah, just finish it,” I said.

  Fiore kicked it, and it opened with a loud crack. Pieces of wood and sawdust flew from the door frame as it gave, taking the molding off on one side.

  “Who’s gonna pay for that?” the old man yelled.

  “You’re his friend, you pay for it,” I said, knowing full well the city would pay for it.

  We heard the fire engines outside as we entered the apartment.

  2

  Once we were inside the apartment, we could hear him louder now, calling, “I’m in here,” then moaning.

  There was a kitchen to the left, with a half wall into a dining area, a living room straight ahead, and two doors on the right. One of the doors was opened, a bedroom, and the other was closed. The apartment was worn, but surprisingly clean and well kept compared to the rest of the building.

  The bathroom door was unlocked, and we opened the door to find a white male lying on the floor, wedged between the wall and the toilet. I could smell burnt hair, flesh, and something else I couldn’t place. I took a step in and slipped on the floor. The bathroom was small, with what looked like the original porcelain fixtures, all in white. The floor was small white tile with a colored mosaic design.

  The guy’s pants were down; apparently he had been on the toilet. There was a saturated copy of the New York Post on the floor in front of the toilet. I saw extensive burns on the lower part of his body and a Marine Corps bulldog tattoo on his leg.

  FD was coming into the apartment now. One of them, I guess the captain, came up behind me.

  “Watch your guys with all that equipment on,” Joe said. “Those stairs felt like they could give out.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Whaddaya got?”

  “Burns on the lower part of his body. Is EMS here?” I asked about the paramedics.

  “Yeah, they just pulled up,” he said, coming into the room.

  “What happened?” he asked the guy lying on the floor.

  “I don’t know,” he moaned. “I lit a cigarette and the toilet blew up.”

  “Sewer gas?” the captain mumbled, then asked him, “Was there water in the toilet?”

  “I think so,” he whimpered.

  I heard Fiore calling Central to slow it down so no one else was rushing to the scene.

  The water from the toilet was now covering the bathroom floor, so I pulled a pair of latex gloves out of my memo book and put them on. I went over to the side of the toilet next to the tub and shut the valve before we had a flood in there. The toilet was cracked but was still intact.

  “How’d the toilet blow up?” the captain asked, looking around the room.

  “I don’t know,” the victim moaned.

  “You sure it was the toilet?” The captain was checking the area around the toilet and inside the shower. “We’re gonna have to move the toilet,” he said. “First we’ll let EMS take a look at him.”

  “Watch the floor, it’s wet,” I said when EMS came into the bathroom. There wasn’t enough room for all of us, so I went to the doorway. Hanrahan was in the living room with Noreen, his driver, six firemen, and the old man. I knew one of the EMS workers; he was about forty, with balding blond hair and glasses. The second guy was younger, early twenties with the dark hair and olive skin that favors us Italians.

  “What is it, a full moon?” he asked as he went past me.

  I never put much stock in the theory that a full moon makes people nuts—they’re nuts anyway.

  “Interesting night?” I asked the older guy.

  “Yeah, and this is only our second job,” he said, shaking his head. He took the victim’s vital signs and started putting sterile wrapping on the burns on his legs. I heard the captain ask if EMS wanted to take him out with the bucket, meaning using the bucket truck up to the window.

  “No, we’ll wrap him up and use the scoop stretcher,” he said.

  The victim was quietly moaning now; I guess the burn wrap gave him some relief from the pain. The EMS worker asked the captain and me to move the toilet. I disconnected the coupling, and the toilet cracked into two pieces as we pulled it away from the wax seal.

  The charred toilet seat, one of those plastic cushioned ty
pes, fell away from the guy’s backside, and there was a white ring around his skin where the seat protected him from the blast.

  I looked around the bathroom as EMS worked. Aside from the hamper, the only other thing in the room was a small white bookcase-type shelf next to the pedestal sink. Brushes and tubes of creams and stuff were neatly arranged on the shelves.

  I heard a rise in the noise level behind me, so I leaned back from the doorway to look into the living room. A hysterical woman with a lot of dark hair came in wearing pink scrubs and a white floral print top.

  “Where’s Danny?” She looked wildly around the room.

  “He’s in here,” I said, making room for her to walk past me.

  “Danny!” she screamed when she saw him on the floor. “What happened?”

  “He said the toilet exploded. We’re trying to find out what happened,” the fire captain said.

  “The toilet exploded? How could the toilet explode? Danny!” she yelled again.

  The husband was moaning, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

  “Ma’am, were there any chemicals in the toilet? Did you clean the bathroom and leave anything in the bowl?” the captain asked.

  She ran her hands over her face and shook her head while thinking. She was staring at the husband, but I saw the minute the lights went on—her hand stalled over her mouth and her eyes got big.

  “What was in there?” the captain asked.

  She looked over at the bowl. “Hair spray. But how could hair spray blow up the toilet?”

  That’s what the other smell was, hair spray.

  “Why’d you put hair spray in the toilet?” The captain looked confused.

  “I was using it and the nozzle stuck. The spray kept coming out, so I put the can in the toilet until it emptied,” she explained as she leaned under the sink and pulled a silver aerosol can out of the garbage pail.

  “Danny, I’m sorry,” she said, and then her face got hard.